French police arrest twelve suspected al-Qaida terrorists

3 of the men allegedly linked to man caught with bomb-making kit in Naples; arrests come as US, France, others step up terror vigilance.

Eiffel Tower terror 311 AP.
(photo credit:Associated Press)

French authorities
arrested twelve men on Tuesday morning on suspicion of involvement with
al-Qaida and terror plots, news agencies reported.

AFP reported a police source as saying the men were detained in the
southern French cities of Marseille and Bordeaux. According to an
official, police seized "some weapons, including a Kalashnikov and a
pump-action shotgun, as well as ammunition."RELATED:An 'evolutive strategy' for fighting terrorAlso on Tuesday, French police arrested three men said to be
linked to a man of Algerian origin taken into custody by Italian police in Naples
on Saturday, who is due to be extradited to France. Police reportedly found the phone numbers for the three men in the mobile phone of the Algerian man.

The man, 28, had been under a European arrest warrant when he was caught, allegedly with a bomb-making kit.

According
to the report, Italian police had placed the man under surveillance,
following and filming him for three days before the arrest. The man had
been in Naples since early September.

In addition to the bomb-making kit, a mobile phone and computer were also seized.

On Monday, French police arrested a
53-year-old man suspected of links to a bomb threats including one
Friday at a Paris railway hub, an official with knowledge of the
investigation said on condition of anonymity. The suspect, who was not
identified, was detained southwest of the capital for possible links to a
phone-in threat at the Saint-Lazare train station.

French
authorities recorded nine bomb alerts in the capital in September,
including two at the Eiffel Tower — a threefold increase from a year
earlier. No explosives were found.